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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Sufferers back idea of taking cannabis for MS
WEB EDITORIAL - webdesk@herts24.co.uk Hunts Press
Wednesday 20 Dec 2006 MULTIPLE sclerosis sufferers in Huntingdonshire said this week they too would take cannabis if their pain got so bad that it was the only way they could get relief. Two women who have the condition said the law should be changed to help people with this progressive and crippling disease. Kathy Nicholetti, 56, from Ramsey, who had first signs of MS aged 36, said: "I belong to the MS Therapy Centre in Huntingdon and I don't take cannabis, that's my choice. "However, I do know a lot of people who have been taking it for years in all sorts of shapes and forms, in cakes and yoghurts for pain relief. It relaxes them and they take it because it does help and I think 'good for them'." Mrs Nicholetti, a grandmother, said if her pain got worse and nothing else would help she would take cannabis and not worry about the law. "It would be helpful if it were legalised for people to take in a pill rather than have to go to shady, backstreet dealers. "I wouldn't like to see it in the wrong hands but MS sufferers would take it purely for pain relief and it would be properly regulated." She added: "I take a couple of glasses of wine in the evening and that helps me. "It is a progressive disease but I have learned how to control it. My arms are weak and the nerve endings don't function in my fingers. My husband puts my earrings in for me and I can't wear contact lenses because I wouldn't be able to pick them up and place them in my eyes. "I get tired but I have a rest in the afternoon. If I do a lot of walking one day, I know that I will have to pay for it the next. When you are weakened you are more prone to catching other things and you have to look after yourself." MS sufferer, Andrena Bromley, 44, also from Ramsey and a volunteer at the MS Therapy Centre in Huntingdon, has had MS for six years. Commenting on the court case, she said: "We have all been talking about it at the centre. I think it's sad because the people who were supplied were taking it because they felt it benefited them and now they are going to be left without what they need. "They should consider decriminalising it for people who think it can benefit them." She said she would take cannabis, if it helped her, but in the past it had not been beneficial. Asked if she would worry about breaking the law, she said: "It seems wrong to say no." The chairman of the MS Therapy Centre in Huntingdon, former business advisor, Simon Mason, 51, believes the use of cannabis chocolate cannot be condoned. "Cannabis is an illegal drug and taking it in chocolate bars means the dose is not controlled. If it is supplied, it should be by a doctor. The chocolate bars are too hit and miss, like buying a drug off the streets." But he added: "If it can be proved to be beneficial then it should be licensed." * MORE than 90 per cent of Hunts Post on-line readers believe cannabis should be legalised for MS sufferers. While the vast majority believe the drug had a place in the UK to help ease the pain of MS sufferers, 8.23 per cent were opposed to its use. http://www.huntspost.co.uk/
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